


The Little Boy That Santa Claus Forgot

by blenalela



Series: we make do - Generation Kill Modern AU Christmas Edition [4]
Category: Generation Kill
Genre: Everyone is Ray's therapist basically, Ray wants to fix him, Walt is feeling bad, bit of angst at the start, lots of weird christmas stuff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-25
Updated: 2019-12-25
Packaged: 2021-02-25 23:46:25
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,298
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21953869
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blenalela/pseuds/blenalela
Summary: Something at work threw Walt into a hole of sadness. Something Ray can't see, especially since he wants everyone in his group of friends to be extra happy during the Holidays. So he sets out to cheer him up again.
Series: we make do - Generation Kill Modern AU Christmas Edition [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1560694
Kudos: 2





	The Little Boy That Santa Claus Forgot

** The Little Boy That Santa Claus Forgot **

****

“… So this means, last night, evening, whatever, Walt comes home, I have already prepared the leftovers from what he cooked the night before, but he doesn’t even say Hello! Just walks past me, into his room and then he goes on and locks the door behind him. So naturally, I go over there, knock on the door, ask “Walt? You ok?” and he just goes “Leave me the fuck alone!” But who am I to leave my friend who’s really not feeling well alone? No no, I whip out my phone and ring Doc, since he works in the pediatric ward too, and ask him if something has happened. And then he tells me that this morning a little boy died after having an appendicitis, ‘cause it was discovered too late, so his appendix ruptured or whatever, I’m no doctor, but they couldn’t help him when they had him surgery room and Walt was assigned to the boy, like he got admitted the night before, and so all of this really tore him down and now he’s thinking he’s to blame for the little boy’s death. And now I don’t really know how I can make him feel better, since he’s avoiding me. But Doc’s pulled some strings to get him a few days off, like the dude’s in the pediatric ward are serious angels, they do their best to give Walt time to clear his mind. But he’s still behaving like a ghost of his normal self. I want the old Walt back, and I mean, it’s Christmas, so he needs to be happy to cherish the time with us friends and shit and stuff like this isn’t supposed to happen in December. Fuck, it should never happen. So do you have any idea?”

Pappy stared at Ray for the first time since he started his monologue and pushed the cup with milk coffee over the counter to him. “Man, don’t you need to breathe? I doubt you ever use paragraphs in your essays, do you?”

“Huh?”

“Nevermind.” Pappy sighed and pushed two packages of sugar over to Ray. “And what do you want me to do now?”

Ray looked at him with puppy dog eyes. “I told you. I need your advice to make him happy again.”

Pappy sighed and turned on the espresso maker Rudy had donated from his private collection of kitchen utensils for the café. Ray hissed and leaped out of his seat. The espresso maker was a sensitive subject ever since Rudy burned him with it.

“Person, come back, it’s me who’s working that thing right now and I know how to use it without spraying steaming hot coffee everywhere.”

Slowly, a look of distrust painted on his face, he got back on his bar stool directly across Pappy.

“Why don’t you drink tea? Like, some tea-time, like your people like to do.”

“Ray, tea-time is something Brits do. Not people from the south.” Pappy huffed. “You do know that you yourself are from the South, right?”

“Not always.”

Matilda was still closed for the day, which meant that nobody was here already, not until another thirty minutes passed at least.

This also meant that Pappy had to play Ray’s therapist for another thirty minutes and no, he wasn’t too pleased with that. That was Nate’s job, or Brad’s. Certainly not his. The more time he spent talking with Ray, the more he felt like he was losing brain cells at an alarming rate.

After he poured his espresso, he walked around the counter and sat down next to Ray.

“You should talk with Brad or Nate about all of this. They know you and Walt better than I do.”

“But you’re the best man when it comes to advice! With all your Southern charm!”

Pappy sighed. “Is it possible that you only want some of the Christmas cookies I’m actually looking to sell?”

Ray nodded.

Pappy sighed again. “I’m packing you some. If this thing is going bankrupt, it’s all because of you.”

“Okay!”

_Okay…_ Pappy rolled his eyes, downed his espresso and went to pack some cookies for Walt.

“Would you care to fill us in as if to why you chose to interrupt our peaceful lives once again?”

“Okay, Brad, look, I already told you what the problem is.”

“Ray, I don’t see why I should play your therapist as it clearly never helped before since you still are a public indecency.”

“Come on, homes! I always help you out! How could forget the ugly Christmas sweaters I got you and Nate? He loves them!”

Ray pointed accusingly to the attorney who was leaning against the kitchen counter, drinking from a red cup that read ‘Santa’s favorite boy’ (And who got him that mug? Exactly! He got it from Darcy at last year’s Secret Santa!) wearing his ugly sweater with the snowman and snow flake resembling pompoms. His cheeks flushed and he looked away from them, hiding his face behind the mug while mumbling something that sounded like “Guilty as charged”.

“You cost me 150$ for this fucking Christmas tree that looses needles at an alarming rate already though Christmas is still some days away, you little Christmas-Nazi.”

Ray started pouting. “If you won’t do it for me, then do it for Walt. He needs help.”

“How about you start searching for solutions to your problems by yourself? What am I? Your therapist?” Brad massaged his temples.

“No offense, but even if you were I’d never go to you. I want you to give me advice as a friend.”

Brad felt like gagging. Ray was on the sentimental tour again. “Okay, then, what have you tried so far?”

“I got Pappy’s cookies which I’m gonna dish out later and I got Doc to give Walt a few days off.”

“Wait, wait, you went to Pappy? Has he given you any advice?”

“He said to go ask you.”

Nate snorted into his cup and tried to suffocate his laughter with the porcelain while Brad looked like he was suffering a short circuit.

After Brad took a moment to fight the urge of suffocating basically all their friends who always send Ray right to him if he had any problem at all and even if it was only the clogged toilet (six times alone this December. Brad didn’t want to ask what the fuck him and Walt were draining down there), he tried thinking of how to help Ray with Walt, since he did like Walt and knew how depressed Walt got at dire times at the hospital. Yet nothing would enter his mind. Cheering someone up from blaming themselves for someone else’s death was an entirely different thing from cheering a fifth-grader up from getting beaten up on the schoolyard.

So he couldn’t just use his profound knowledge of basic schoolyard cheer to cheer Walt up.

Like, there wasn’t a lot chocolate couldn’t fix, but Brad was sure this was one of those times.

Nate cleared his throat. “Ray, I think this is something you yourself should fix. Not us. So use your own brain, I mean, you’re good at this stuff, right? Think about how many times you barged in here to make one of us feel better. You did that, right? Don’t worry this much, you’re gonna fix Walt too.”

Ray looked up at Nate, comparable to a child looking up to his father which made the urge to throw Ray out this second rise up in Nate’s chest and asked: “Really?”

Brad nodded, supporting Nate. “Yes, yes you did. So now go back to Walt and let your magic work.”

A sudden burst of determination erupting in Ray’s chest, he downed his coffee, jumped at Nate, engulfing him in a big hug (to which the latter did not respond at all; too surprised to react), did the same to Brad (a loud hiss followed by a “Don’t fucking touch me!”), gathered his belongings and out he was.

He was so gonna pull little Walt out of his current emo-phase.

At exactly 18:00 p. m. everything was ready. Ray only needed Walt now. Which was, to be honest, the most challenging part, since Walt had literally locked the door to his room.

But Ray wasn’t Ray if he didn’t have a solution for this too. No, no, Ray was prepared for everything. He’d even be prepared for an upcoming zombie-apocalypse, just in case.

And, without sounding conceited (a word he learned from Brad and Nate), he was mighty proud of what he had prepared for Waltie.

Okay, he didn’t do any of it alone.

After he had stormed out of the lovebird’s flat, he ran back to Pappy and asked for a good (but first and foremost easy) Christmas dinner. From Matilda’s, he made his way over to the grocery store and together with all of the groceries he needed, he went back to where he had come from. Nate and Brad.

He had been under the strong impression that Brad was just about to fucking kill him, but thanks to Nate, Ray survived. Together with their help, he cooked exactly what Pappy had told him and how.

And if it wasn’t enough, he even got the luxury of being driven home by Nate (neither him nor Brad would want him to take the bus back to their flat (since he didn’t have a car (he normally used the cab for shopping and stuff, but the company found out))).

He had stored everything in the fridge for later, Ray was actually pretty confident that he wouldn’t fuck it all up by heating it up, and then ran to his favorite store.

The ‘Jolly-Holly Christmas Party Store’.

And in this fine little store he found everything to perfect his plan.

Slowly, he crept up to Walt’s room, the key for the bathroom in his hand. Walt had decided to lock himself up by forgetting that every door in their apartment had the same lock. If he had wanted to do it right, he would have had to take the key from Ray’s bedroom and the bathroom as well. One could even think the sweet boy didn’t even really try to keep his roommate out.

Just as he was about to unlock the door to Walt’s tomb, he heard his voice from the other side of it. “Don’t even think about it.”

Swiftly, Walt got up and opened the door himself. He looked disheveled which was no surprise since he didn’t need to make any effort to look presentable if he was just holed in his room of pity. (Oh, who was Ray kidding. Walt could probably roll in a mud puddle and wear nothing but a trash bag and the ladies would still swoon over him. It had been a bad decision living with Walt.)

Apart from his outer appearance, his eyes were a bit glassy and there was no sign of the warm gaze normally lingering behind them.

“What?” he asked, running a hand through his blond hair and giving the slightest hint of wanting to submerge into his room again.

But Ray didn’t have any of it. Instead, he put on a bright smile, took Walt’s hand and pulled him towards the living room. Walt was so gonna be feeling better if he saw this.

Walt remained speechless for three minutes, not quite believing what Ray had done to their shared living room.

There was a huge snowman-family sitting on the windowsill, all four of them dancing and blinking, maybe also singing, but Walt couldn’t really decide whether the music came from them or from the beaver wearing a Santa Clause costume on the corner (human-sized).

Apart from that, Ray had bought a DVD showing nothing but a burning fireplace happily crackling over the screen and new candles for the tree that were actually flickering like real candles. And if it wasn’t enough, he had prepared food. Ray. Had prepared food. A sentence Walt would have never guessed to build.

He felt a slight nudge at his side and turned to look at Ray who was now wearing his reindeer sweater and a Christmas hat with a real Santa Clause beard. He held his sweater and another hat without beard in his hand and gestured for Walt to put them on.

And with that, Ray had managed to get his friend back on track. A huge grin spread across Walt’s entire face as he took the stuff from Ray and put it on. Then he wrapped his arms around his friend. “Thank you, you crazy hick.”

“Love you too, Waltie.” Ray hugged him back, a bone-crushing experience in most cases. “You better now?”

“Yeah, I guess so.” Walt trailed off. “Can’t change any of it, huh?”

“Doc Bryan told me to tell you that nothing was your fault at all. Oh, and Merry Christmas!”

“I know. It still sucks, you know?”

Ray nodded. “You wanna eat now before it gets cold?”

Walt let go of him. “Is it even edible?”

“I did it with Nate and Brad after Pappy’s recipe! If it’s bad none of it is my fault at all, you hear me?” Theatrically, Ray threw himself onto the couch, burying his white beard sporting face in the many penguin, reindeer, snowman and Santa-shaped cushions. (Don’t ask about how Ray is paying for all of this. No one ever knows.)

“Ray? Do you smell that too?”

Ray sniffed the air, then let out a small cry. “My crème brûlée!”

Walt toppled over laughing, slamming into the green carpet as he fell from the couch – though a little voice in the back of his mind was telling him to call the fire department instead of laughing at Ray’s shenanigans.

**Author's Note:**

> Words:  
> emo-phase  
> tea-time  
> christmas tree  
> ugly sweater  
> nazi
> 
> Merry Christmas!


End file.
